ByAlyssa Meyers | Marketing Brew
Fubo is getting in the zone.
Capitalizing on growing demand for women’s sports like basketball and volleyball, the streamer introduced a hub for women’s sports content to its home page earlier this month, where viewers can find programming including live games and documentaries. The first advertiser integration is set to roll out Saturday in time with the second weekend of the WNBA season, VP of Ad Sales Jennifer Monson shared exclusively with Marketing Brew.
“The advertiser interest and the amount of response that we’ve had from launching this women’s hub has been huge for us,” she said.
Fubo declined to name the inaugural sponsor ahead of the activation going live this weekend, but Monson said it’s a financial services brand running a campaign across the hub, spanning inventory like pause ads and interactive ads. Fubo also has another financial services brand signed on to advertise in the hub, both new clients for the streamer whose campaigns amount to “about seven figures in revenue,” she said.
Follow the fandom: It’s not just brands that are interested in Fubo’s women’s sports content; the idea for the hub, called the Women’s Sports Zone, came about as a result of viewership trends, Monson said. Audience demand “reached a fever pitch” last year, she said, when Caitlin Clark and the 2024 draft class joined the WNBA, helping spur record-breaking viewership last season.
It was around that time, Monson said, that advertisers started expressing growing interest in women’s sports content on Fubo, including brands from categories that hadn’t historically been spending much in the sports space.
“We saw our viewership numbers going way up, but then we also saw a big call from advertisers who wanted to really lean in and support women’s sports,” she said. “It was just a general demand from both sides of the market, where people were asking, ‘How can we align with women’s sports from an advertising [perspective], and how can we watch more women’s sports?’”
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From there, creating the Women’s Sports Zone “was just natural,” Monson said: 61% of Fubo subscribers use the platform to watch women’s sports, according to the company.
Brand wagon: The Fubo ad sales team has been pitching the hub during upfronts season, Monson told us. For brands that want to activate in the space, she said her team will help create custom activations that can include a “branded skin” that spans the entire page, pause ads, and interactive ads like trivia questions or other games.
Women’s Sports Zone advertisers can also retarget audiences in men’s sports on Fubo, too, Monson added. Ideally, she said, the campaigns will span beyond logo placements, a sentiment that’s shared by other leagues and brands in women’s sports.
“We wanted something that’s not going to be just a logo slap,” Monson said. “We really want brands to align with the culture, the energy, the momentum of women’s sports.”
Given the timing of the rollout with the start of the WNBA season, that league will be particularly prominent for now, but Monson said the Women’s Sports Zone is also set to include plenty of content around sports like volleyball, Olympic sports, and the NCAA down the line.